WASHINGTON — The disconnect was striking. As Donald Trump doubled down on his disdain for an “obsolete” NATO this week, Eastern European and Baltic leaders were pitching a very different message to U.S. leaders: American support for the 66-year-old alliance is more vital than ever.

“It is in the interest of the United States not to have war in Europe," Polish President Andrzej Duda told reporters in Washington. "The alliance has to be protected on all of its flanks” against an increasingly aggressive Russia, he added.

The Obama administration was clearly listening. On Wednesday, it said more troops and tanks will be sent to Europe's eastern fringes from February 2017, with military exercises planned in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary.

Trump is nearly alone in thinking that the U.S. should walk away from nearly 70 years of post-war security policy and reduce U.S. involvement in the alliance. But his observation that European governments often free-ride on American military might is a view shared by many in Washington. Even President Barack Obama has criticized European over-reliance on U.S. military spending.

Leaders from Europe’s eastern countries were quick to tell the U.S: We pay our own way.

“We understand that security is not a one-way street. You can’t only be a consumer — you need to do your bit,” Estonian Defense Minister Hannes Hanso told POLITICO, after a meeting with Defense Secretary Ash Carter at the Pentagon.

Noting Estonian involvement in the Middle East and the Balkans, along with the country’s population of just 1.3 million, he said his country is sending instructors to Iraq to help train security forces, and added that Estonia is one of only five countries that meets the NATO mandate of spending at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. (The others are the U.S., Poland, Greece and the United Kingdom.)

European defense cuts have halted after years of clawbacks. Former supreme allied commander in Europe Admiral James Stavridis: “We love to hammer [the Europeans]”

Asked about Trump’s comments, Hanso said he didn’t “want to get involved in U.S. internal politics.” But he added: “Should European countries do more? Yes, they should be doing more.”

Poland’s Duda stressed in a speech at the German Marshall Fund that “we stood by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, we are one of few countries in the alliance with a defense spending of 2 percent of our GDP and we’re pursuing the modernization of our Armed Forces.”

European defense cuts have halted after years of clawbacks. And NATO's former supreme allied commander in Europe, Admiral James Stavridis, told POLITICO that “we love to hammer [the Europeans],” but the reality is that non-U.S. NATO alliance members spend a total of $300 billion on defense — more than Russia and China’s total defense spending.

The idea that Europe is free-loading “is a mis-categorization,” Stavridis, who is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said. He said Trump's comments were “nonsensical,” and Obama’s criticism comes from a position of knowledge.

“We've got to encourage the allies to spend more, and also create a sense in the United States that there is good value for our dollar in this alliance,” he said.

Stravridis, who supervised NATO operations in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, said the Pentagon’s Wednesday announcement on troops sounds about right for the moment.

“If we see Russia continuing to make threatening statements and taking ... actions like … further incursions into the sovereignty of Ukraine, then I think we’ll see more U.S. troops. But I think the level of response by the administration is roughly appropriate at this point,” he said.

Preparing for Warsaw

Officials from the Baltic states stress that the Russian threat to their security is far from theoretical. Hanso noted that Moscow has been placing weapons systems and troops in the Russian province of Kaliningrad — which is separated from the rest of the country and sits between Lithuania and Poland — and conducting exercises there.

“We’re not an island but when it comes to security we’re almost on an island — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,” he said. During a crisis, he added, Russia and Belarus would most likely try to close the small border between Lithuania and Poland known as the Suwałki Gap, preventing NATO troops from reinforcing the Baltics.

“All of a sudden, we are the eastern front of the free world,” Hanso said, adding that cyber-warfare should be a higher priority for NATO, and that Estonia is well positioned to help. In 2007, Estonia was hit by a major cyberattack, which was widely believed to have been perpetrated by Russia.

In advance of a NATO summit this summer in Warsaw, the Baltic states announced joint proposals for what they want: a permanent battalion-sized NATO military presence along with pre-positioned weaponry in the region.

Poland wants much the same. In a speech at the National Press Club, Duda said that the July NATO summit “must demonstrate that we are capable of building an adequate and cohesive defense potential based on resilience and deterrence. Today this involves increasing the presence of troops and allied infrastructure on NATO`s eastern flank. Real deterrence means real presence.”

“U.S. engagement in reassurance activities has been and will remain crucial,” he added, cheering the Obama’s administration’s moves to beef up NATO defense in Europe through the so-called European Reassurance Initiative.

The focus on NATO comes as Duda and other leaders visit Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit — and as the West debates the need to expand NATO’s role in the fight against ISIL in the wake of the Brussels attacks.

Duda was quick to say in his Wednesday speech that Poland recognizes the need for NATO to be involved in combatting terrorism and the threat of Islamic State. At the same time, he said that “we should not waste our energy on debating which is more dangerous: a tank battalion or a bunch of terrorists on the streets.”

The Trump effect

Coincidentally, the influx of European officials to Washington, along with other world leaders, came as Trump fleshed out his foreign policy views. The businessman, who continues to lead the race for the Republican presidential nomination, thinks that NATO isn’t equipped to fight terrorism. But his deeper problems with the alliance, which turns 67 next week, are far more troubling to Europeans and most American officials.

In interviews with the Washington Post and the New York Times, and on a CNN program earlier this week, Trump advocated scaling back U.S. funding for and involvement in NATO, saying it’s not a good deal for the U.S., and that it’s not sufficiently equipped to fight terrorism.

“We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore,” he said.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Trump’s views are akin to “turning our alliance into a protection racket, [and] would reverse decades of bipartisan American leadership.”

U.S. military leaders have even weighed in.

“I think that [the Europeans] are punching below their weight in terms of military expenditure and we ought to encourage them to meet that 2 percent of GDP spending goal" — James Stavridis

"In my mind, the relevance of NATO is not at all in question," Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joe Dunford said Wednesday at MacDill Air Force Base. He said a question about NATO's role in the world might have been warranted 15 years ago, but, "it's hard to think about asking that question today."

Noting Dunford’s comments, former NATO commander Stavridis called it “pretty striking to have an active duty wading into a political conversation like this.”

“I think that [the Europeans] are punching below their weight in terms of military expenditure and we ought to encourage them to meet that 2 percent of GDP spending goal that they have established for themselves,” Stavridis said. “But it’s a mistake to say that the NATO allies are not in the game.”